Google Maps Animation

Google Maps now allows users to share their location in real time and update their friends and family on their location and estimated time of arrival when making a trip. On Wednesday, March 22, the tech giant announced that this Google Maps app update for both Android and iOS ...more

When you're going somewhere for the first time, it's nice to know what the destination will look like. Street View in Google Maps is the perfect tool for that, though it's always been a little awkward to access. But now, Google added a new overlay that will put Street View con ...more

Going out to dinner on a Saturday night can be more trouble than it's worth when you find yourself waiting for hours on end just to be seated. Thankfully, Google Maps has some very useful data that can save you from a headache the next time you head out to your favorite restau ...more

Ever since the announcement of The Walking Dead: Our World game last fall, publisher AMC and developer Next Games have been quiet about the title. Almost too quiet. That silence has now been shattered with the release of a gameplay trailer (see bottom of this page) for the ga ...more

As helpful as it is, Google Maps isn't the only mapping app with augmented reality walking navigation anymore. This week, Israel-based startup Moovit introduced a new AR navigation feature called Way Finder for its eponymous navigation app for public transit and ridesharing s ...more

Google just recently added an incognito mode feature to Google Maps for iPhone and Android. With that, you can now use Maps in private at any time, which means you can browse and search with peace of mind. The incognito feature for Maps is quite similar to what you get from C ...more

For those of you still waiting for the new iPhone 5, you may be a little annoyed when you start using the new Maps application. If you're one of the many Apple users that has already updated your current iPhone to iOS 6, then you're probably already missing Google Maps. While ...more

With Google Maps, we can fly from Los Angeles to Tokyo to Paris and New York—all in a matter of seconds. We can zoom in with relative ease and flock around the city of our choice, checking out restaurants, historical landmarks, traffic and scuba divers. Easily the most recogni ...more

Google is constantly changing and updating its apps to make the lives of its users easier. Google Maps is no exception, as the company now includes options for wheelchair accessible transportation routes. From now on, you can set a trip with accessibility as a priority with Go ...more

Google Maps Live View is already one of the more useful examples of augmented reality on smartphones that is available to the average consumer today. Leveraging Google's massive Street View library, Maps uses computer vision to identify your surroundings and then overlay virt ...more

Google Maps does a lot of things well, but one feature it's always been lacking is an on-screen speedometer. Well, now you can add one with Velociraptor, and you can even set it to alert you when you're traveling above the speed limit. While Velociraptor works in other naviga ...more

Google Maps, once considered superior to Apple Maps, has contributed to a terrible mistake for one woman. A group of demolition workers in Texas were using the service to find a worksite, and to the dismay of homeowner Lindsay Diaz, Google was entirely inaccurate. The home sc ...more

For the most part, new features for Google Maps, such as Live View augmented reality walking navigation, come to Android first. One exception is changing your vehicle icon in driving navigation, which is now coming to Android after debuting on iPhones and iPads. On both vers ...more

As intuitive as Google Maps is for finding the best routes, it never let you choose departure and arrival times in the mobile app. This feature has long been available on the desktop site, allowing you to see what traffic should be like at a certain time and how long your driv ...more

An HD remake of The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess arrived today for Nintendo's Wii U, and Google is celebrating the occasion by swapping in Link—the protagonist of the Legend of Zelda series—for the regular yellow Pegman on Google Maps. Once you're in Street View, yo ...more

Before heading out on a hike, or any excursion for that matter, it would be wise to take a map with you just in case you get lost while on your quest. But let's be realistic, few people are going to use a physical map—or even know how to obtain or read one—in this digital age ...more

April Fool's has come early, with an update for Google's Maps application for both Android and iOS that's geared towards finding their next big hire: Pokémon Master. While we've been been collecting some of our favorite April Fool's Day Pranks to pull on your friends, co-work ...more

If you're using an up-to-date version of Google Maps on your Android device, there's a little-known feature you can use to apply stickers to saved places, making them visually easier to find while you're looking at the map. This is by no means a groundbreaking feature, but it ...more

It's that time of year again. Each spring, Google likes to have a bit of fun with April Fool's Day. Pranks have ranged from a fake email printing service called Gmail Paper to a search engine for smells. It's all fun and games, but this year, they've taken that mantra rather s ...more

As one of the most heavily utilized map applications out there, it's worth mentioning when Google Maps introduces changes big and small into its app. In the case of the most recent update, it's not so much of a change that they've made as much as it is an improvement. With ve ...more

Even if you're totally familiar with all the routes you can take to go home or work, you'll still want to use Google Maps to find the fastest route in current traffic conditions. If you're on Android, there's an extremely fast way to do this. To quickly initiate navigation to ...more

Google Maps beta version 9.49 now allows users to manually save their parking location, and includes weather forecasts in mass transit, according to Android Police. There's also a notification toggle for mass transit station notifications. Here's a breakdown of the new featur ...more

There's nothing worse than driving up to your destination only to discover that there isn't a parking spot in sight — but thankfully, Google Maps will soon have you covered. Android Police reports that the latest beta version of Maps V9.5 will incorporate a number of handy to ...more

The AR walking navigation feature in Google Maps, which is arguably one of the most useful mobile augmented reality to available to consumers, is about to get even more indispensable for travelers. On Tuesday, Google announced a number of new features coming to Google Maps, c ...more

Utility tool apps provide extremely powerful and useful lightweight replacements for your parents' heavy archaic tools—everything from flashlights to tracking systems and more. If you're looking to expand on your collection of digital tools, Maps Measure, from Android dev j4v ...more

We've all been there. You're driving along with Google Maps pointing the way when you get a call from your friend asking you how much longer it'll be until you show up. You try to offer some lame excuse about how something came up last-minute, but you're interrupted, quite rud ...more

This week, Google sidestepped their usual "Update Wednesday" strategy by dropping a huge update to their Maps app for both Android and iOS. We're accustomed to seeing new features and bug fixes to their stable of apps on Wednesdays, but today's Maps update was presumably big e ...more

On a recent trip to Palm Springs, I found myself navigating with Google Maps and virtually exploring my destiniation using its built-in Street View feature. The thing is, using Street View can make keeping track of your exact location difficult as you zoom in, out, and about. ...more

Alongside the launch of Android 11, Google has gifted Pixel users with several exclusive features, including App Suggestions on the home screen. Another exclusive feature involves Live View, the augmented reality walking navigation feature in Google Maps and one of the more us ...more

Yes, you read that right—you can now get Google Maps back on your iPhone again. It may not be officially replacing Apple's notorious Maps app, but it sure is a sight for sore eyes. Video: . Following the release of iOS 6, it was hard to find a good word anywhere about Apple's ...more

On September 1st, 2015, Google made headlines by introducing their new logo. It may not seem like huge news to some, but as I write this, there have been 2,167,914,729 searches on Google so far today. So there's a large amount of people who see their logo when browsing the Web ...more

The Google Pixel and Pixel XL have an exclusive set of navigation buttons that you can't get on any other device without some tinkering. But aside from just being solid, filled-in shapes, the real treat in the Pixel's nav bar is the Google Assistant animation that gets activat ...more

When I heard that Google finally released a maps app for Apple's iOS 6, I almost cried. After upgrading to iOS 6 from iOS 5.1 on my iPhone 4, I was sad to realize that Apple Maps was the new default map app. I don't even have to explain why having Apple Maps as the native mapp ...more

Millions depend on Google Maps for directions, and it's easy to see why. The app comes with tons of features like offline navigation, location sharing, and more. Google is far from done, however, and continually improves upon its navigation app to make it even more efficient a ...more

Staying alert to directions and changing the music you're listening to on your smartphone at the same time can be cumbersome, but Google Maps wants to fix that. One of the mapping service's features allows you to control music playing on Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Play M ...more

With so much stimuli in today's world, it can be hard to keep track of all the places we've visited and the events we've attended. Thankfully, a great feature in Google Maps lets you view a detailed log of your phone's location history to help you remember where you were at al ...more

While Google isn't ready to commit to a wide release of the AR walking navigation mode for Google Maps, the company has begun testing the feature with members of its Local Guides crowdsourcing community. As a result, I've had the opportunity to test an alpha build of the feat ...more

Every single year technology companies have a little bit of fun on April Fool's Day by releasing absurd, yet almost believable stories of some new product or feature. Yesterday, Google publicized the release of Google Nose—a new project in beta—that supposedly allowed users to ...more

Alongside the launch of Android 11, Google added a new feature to Live View, the augmented reality mode for walking navigation in Google Maps, that helps you find friends in AR. But even if you're not trying to meet up with somebody, you can easily access the AR mode and orien ...more

Somewhere in a back-end update, Google snuck a Google Maps Trivia game into its mobile Maps apps. The game is accessible through the Google Maps side-navigation menu on Android and iOS (hidden right at the bottom, of course), and it's ready to play right now. It's a rather fun ...more

Alongside its official unveiling of the lower-cost Pixel 3a smartphone at Google I/O, Google took the opportunity to extend its early preview of AR walking navigation in Google Maps to all Pixel devices. After introducing the capability at last year's Google I/O Google began ...more

You don't have to be a frequent flyer to know how indispensable navigation apps have become. Many of us rely on these apps for traveling from state to state and getting around in foreign cities, but even more of us count on these apps to beat rush hour traffic and find the qui ...more

At Google's I/O developer conference keynote on Tuesday, ARCore may have been absent, but Google did preview a potentially trailblazing augmented reality feature for Google Maps. Google's vice president of product for AR, VR, and vision-based products, Aparna Chennapragada, p ...more

Franchises left and right are releasing Pokémon Go-style augmented reality games, and Google is making it even easier to churn out the apps. Announced today via a company blog post, the Google Maps API now enables developers to build their own location-based games using Maps ...more

Snapchat made augmented reality selfie effects famous, with Facebook copying the feature across its mobile apps. Of course, others have followed, but their face tracking apps often pale in comparison to the original. Now, Google is giving Android developers the keys to adding ...more

|Choose Your View: Quick Bullet Points | Detailed Descriptions Android's newest major update is a special one — it's the tenth full version of the world's most commonly used operating system. The latest release, dubbed simply Android 10 (codename Android Q), was first showcas ...more

So you're thinking about downloading the Galaxy S8 Oreo beta, but you're not sure if it's stable enough to use. It is a beta, of course, so you might want to wait for others to give it a try. Over the past ten days I've used the Galaxy S8+ running Android Oreo as my daily driv ...more

Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting and prayer, is underway, and Google has rolled out several tools to help Muslims commemorate the event, including an augmented reality app. Last year, Google launched Qibla Finder, an augmented reality web app that points users in th ...more

After building a tech empire on revenues from search advertising, Google is not about to sit back and let Snapchat, Facebook, 8th Wall, and others draw all the AR marketing attention to their platforms. This week, at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity (basi ...more

Amazon Web Service's do-it-yourself tool for building augmented reality experiences and VR has graduated from beta and is now available to all interested users. Unveiled at the AWS re:Invent developer conference last year, Amazon Sumerian is billed as software that lets anyon ...more

Apple is combining internal and external talent in an effort to give them in edge in the augmented reality market, though we still don't know what form their foray into alternative realities will actually take. Rumors have been spreading for years about Apple's interest in au ...more

Google has started to release a Go line of Android apps. These apps offer a minimalistic version of their major app counterpart. So far, we have Go versions of Maps, Photos, Gmail, and more. Who are these apps for and why would you want to use them? Here's a quick overview of ...more

Business cards are a great way to keep tabs on the contacts we network with. So why shouldn't our smartphones make them even more useful? Enter Google Lens, which will help you save, search, and expand on the contact information found on all of the business cards you've collec ...more

The Snapdragon 801 processor inside the OnePlus One puts the device on par with other phones like the HTC One M8 and LG G3 in terms of power and speed. While the OPO is just as fast and responsive as many of the flagships currently available, there's no reason why we can't try ...more

The next big iOS version for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch was revealed by Apple at WWDC 2018 and dropped for everyone on Sept. 17, 2018, less than a week after Apple revealed the new iPhone lineup. We've rounded up all the big picture items and secret features and changes we c ...more

Thanks to online music services like eMusic and iTunes, compact discs are becoming a far distant memory, turning local music shops around the country into desolate wastelands. The once mighty movie rental store Blockbuster is now bankrupt because of online streaming services l ...more

If you like the "Street View" feature in Google Maps, you'll love "Look Around" in iOS 13's Apple Maps. Overall, Look Around has more details than Street View and the animations are super smooth as you navigate down streets and pedestrian areas. While Look Around isn't availab ...more

All phones (yes, iPhones too) slow down over time. As your device gets bogged down by various apps and you begin to run out of storage, it's just an inevitability. That doesn't make it any less frustrating ... I mean, is there anything more annoying than a slow phone? My answe ...more